


Do Something for You

by ShadowoftheLamp



Series: Adventures in Parenthood [4]
Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Bonus Chapter, Gen, POV switch, Time Travel, fanchild
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 11:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25469929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowoftheLamp/pseuds/ShadowoftheLamp
Summary: Bonus chapter that goes between chapters 9 and 10 of Temporal Displacement. Spoilers for up to that point.
Series: Adventures in Parenthood [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1532000
Comments: 1
Kudos: 30





	Do Something for You

**Author's Note:**

> Seriously, this kind of spoils one of the 'twists' in the story, don't read it unless you've read up through chapter 9. I'm just posting this here for posterity. Go read that first.

Dib smiled to himself. On the TV, a jaguar growled, but here, in the living room, it was warm. Comfortable. The butter from the popcorn still melted on his tongue, and Twix had curled herself up like a happy little kid-lump.

He could see so much of himself in her, when he looked. Her nose turned up at the end, the same way his and Gaz’s did. Her hair was the same thick black as his, although admittedly that wasn’t really that uncommon. It had the same spikes on her cheeks that Gaz’s did, and if he squinted… maybe it was the light, but the edges almost looked purple. 

The skin color was still… weird. He’d seen worse, though- the closer people lived to the middle of the city, the weirder they tended to look. The cesspool and radiation experiments were pretty good at causing birth mutations. It wasn’t as deep green as Zim’s, anyway, just a normal mutated human green. 

Maybe she didn’t want to talk about her mom because she’d died? Or maybe she had been an experiment of some kind- Dad had been going on about potentially creating cyborgs and clones, after all… and okay, that had been the _one_ experiment Dib had been kind of interested in seeing play out. Besides… 18? Yeesh. That was a whole six years from now, but still, that was pretty young, right? Yeah, most likely she was some experiment that he’d decided to raise, her mom was probably just some sample from a test tube. She’d clearly been a success, though! She knew almost as much as he did, and she actually _listened_. Listened and asked questions and engaged in conversation, she didn’t just zone out, and then elbow him by the time they got to skool.

Dib had never really thought ahead to having a family, but she was pretty much everything she’d want in one. She was an assistant and a partner, she was invested in the paranormal, she hated Zim- but on the other hand, she didn’t want him hurt? She seemed weirdly invested in making sure he _didn’t_ get caught, actually. Eh, she’d hit him pretty hard, so it wasn’t like she was _opposed_ to him getting his rightful dues for being an evil space monster.

It was relatively simple- she was just worried if he died then her timeline would be destabilized, which was a decent enough concern. Zim _had_ to be important to his life for years to come, in one way or another. But whatever they were dealing with in the future, it _had_ to be better with Zim out of the way earlier, right?

She said that he’d dealt with him, maybe she thought it mattered _when_ he was caught? If he captured Zim when he was 16 or something, it’d change everything. He’d finally have the recognition that he deserved, and he’d be able to settle down just enough to pick her up at 18, that made sense. He’d always known that this war could really end two ways- with one of them strung up on the other’s wall- but knowing that it was all going to be worth it…

She curled up a little more in her sleep, and he sighed.

“I need to _do_ something for you. I can’t just- make a cake or something, that’s cheesy. And kinda awkward. And I’m terrible at baking.” Dib tapped his chin. “Hmm… what do girls like? She said she likes plants, but dead flowers might be- would that be an insult? I feel like that would be an insult.” 

Air whistled a little as it blew from her nose, and he held back a laugh. “Okay, let’s see. You like plants. You like dissecting things. You like the paranormal, same as I do. You don’t seem to want Zim to be captured yet, but know that he goes down in the future, so maybe I can work you down on that one.” He clicked his tongue. “I just- wish you could stay longer. You’d like it here, you said you had one friend but she’d be fine for a while. If Keef’s her dad, she’s got to be _so_ clingy, I’m sure she’ll find somebody else.” He shuddered, before leaning over to pat her side. 

“I’d be better than that. I could say you’re a cousin, and we’d be an unstoppable team! I could just… ‘lose’ one of the parts for a few days. You’d be okay with that, right? I’ve got food and a roof over your head, I can keep you safe.” Twix didn’t reply, just curled her fingers a little tighter around the blanket. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He scanned over her again, before catching sight of the cracked lens. “Duh!” A grin spread across his face. “I’ll just fix it! I know how annoying cracked lenses can be, and you’ll be happy and it’ll be fine. Dad’s got to have something for that around here, especially since he wears goggles too.” He reached over, gently tugging the band up from just next to the lens, up and over her head. 

“There we go.” He held the goggles up to the light. “Wow, these look really nice, I’d probably be mad if you came back home with them broken. I’m doing both you _and_ my future self a favor.” Tilting them to and fro, he could tell that the glass was tinted slightly even from the inside. He’d noticed it, of course, but it was still kind of a strange choice. “Are your eyes robotic or something?” Slowly, Dib lowered the goggles. “You don’t have to be ashamed of that, robot eyes are pretty cool. Or are they a weird color? Maybe…” He peered over the couch. Still no Gaz. “Maybe it’s a clue…” His heart started thrumming. In all likelihood, her eyes were just brown. It was a dominant allele, after all. Still, he’d already been wondering, and it couldn’t hurt anything, right? He’d just ask casually once she was awake. She wouldn’t suspect a thing.

To make sure she was solidly asleep, Dib waved a hand in front of her face. No response. Carefully, he pinched her eyelid with a gentle touch. Still nothing, she was out like a light. He leaned his other hand on the cushion in front of her to keep balance as he pulled it open.

It was pink.

The color in itself wasn’t too strange- he’d seen pink and purple eyes before, mostly around people with other mutations, which she clearly had. (He still didn’t buy the idea that she’d lost _both_ fingers in the same accident but it hadn’t been worth prying, yet. And with this…)

He checked the other eye, as if the first one had been a fluke.

Also pink.

 _Zim_ -pink. 

The dark pink that filled the entire sclera with no iris, the dark pink that only a couple of hours ago had been glaring at him, ready to tear his guts out.

She was still asleep. She was a deep sleeper, apparently. His fingers shook as he traced back on her head, past the little hooks of hair that looked like Gaz’s, back, back-

She didn’t have ears either. 

He was an _idiot._

_Fuck._

“No. No, there has to-“ A clone. That’s it. She must be a clone. She was too advanced and squishy and _human_ to be a robot and Zim had advanced tech, he was probably watching him from the lab right now and laughing. Laughing, now that he’d had full access to Dib’s house for _days._ Laughing that Dib was so gullible, he’d sworn he’d never fall for this again, but she was so- so _nice._

How could something _Zim_ made pretend to care that much?

Dib’s fingers curled into a fist and he turned to rummage in the drawer next to the couch. 

He was getting answers. One way or another.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally going to be a mini-chapter in the fic itself, but it felt weird to shift the perspective for just one point, so it goes separately. 
> 
> This is also the single 'fuck' in the whole fic and I had it planned since the start.
> 
> Comments and kudos appreciated!


End file.
